


patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Platonic Jealousy, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 09:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16699963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: He doesn't like the idea of him and Cheng coming up with the same ideas.





	patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature

**Author's Note:**

  * For [two_of_swords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_of_swords/gifts).



> Written for two-of-swords, who prompted "Ronan to Henry Cheng, Why are you screaming?"
> 
> This is the most commas I've ever crammed into one title and I am _so_ proud of myself. My pretension, like the universe, is ever-expanding.

"What the fuck was that for?"

Cheng doesn't look bothered by Ronan's words, or his tone, or the fact that he just barged into Monmouth unannounced and caught him lurking. "Your corvid started it."

Chainsaw screeches a second time.

Cheng screeches back.

Ronan swats at Chainsaw until she swoops off his shoulder, elegant in her offense, and flies up to sit on an exposed rafter.

"Is Dick here?"

Cheng shakes his head. "He went to drive Blue home."

"When?" Fox Way isn't too far. That won't take long, unless the Pig broke down, in which case he needs to mount a rescue mission.

"Half an hour ago." Cheng does something disturbing with his face. "I believe he and Blue may have gotten...distracted."

Ronan grimaces. "Christ, someone needs to tell them to stop sucking face."

"I'm inclined to give them their privacy." He's pretty high and mighty for a guy who's literally high; the smell of weed does nothing to improve Monmouth's natural aroma. "Of course, if you wish to join them I would not judge -- "

Ronan grabs Cheng's joint and flicks it outside before slamming the door shut. He's only been here for sixty seconds and he's already annoyed and antsy. He misses the days when the warehouse was haunted by an actual ghost, instead of a loser with no respect for boundaries.

"So you just thought you'd hang around in the dark like a creep?"

"I was invited in," Cheng says. "I think that belies any accusations of creepiness." He drifts over to the couch and picks up a lighter, flicks it on and dances his fingers through the tiny flame. It looks like it takes all of his attention. "Besides, I thought it might be nice for someone to be here, so Gansey boy does not return to a dark and empty home."

That's too much to take from a stoner pyromaniac. Too much like an accusation ( _you abandoned him_ ), too much like an invasion ( _you abandoned him so I'm taking your place_ ), too much like the reason that Ronan's here. He doesn't like the idea of him and Cheng coming up with the same ideas.

He thinks about leaving, but then Cheng would tell Gansey, and then Gansey would look sad and try to force them all to hang out. Ronan is two weeks, max, from getting a _give him a chance, you'll love him once you get to know him_ lecture like the ones that he used to get about Adam. The fact that Gansey had been right back then is not proof of Gansey's powers of discernment or Ronan's capacity for human interaction or of anything except the fact that Adam is amazing. Ronan has no desire to bring that argument on himself any faster than necessary.

Instead he drops down on the busted armchair opposite Cheng. His latest dream thing digs awkwardly into his leg; he fishes it out of his pocket and rolls it between his palms.

"What is that?"

Ronan doesn't look up at Cheng. "Junk."

"Hm. What was it meant to be, then?"

There's no short answer to that, and no long answer that he wants to explain to anyone, much less Cheng. If Ronan was able to explain himself he wouldn't _have_ to make stupid magic trinkets to do his talking for him.

"Doesn't matter. It doesn't work."

He'd hoped that once he got it where it was meant to be it would come to life, that the object would know it was in the place he'd created it for. But it hasn't changed at all. It's the same as it had been at the Barns, a plain glass sphere, like a Christmas tree ornament or a tiny crystal ball. The only remarkable thing about it is that it's warm to the touch -- like there's something inside of it, invisible, that would come out if Ronan could trigger it.

But there is no trigger, no buttons, no features to it at all.

"Hmm," Cheng hums again, much closer this time. He snuck up on Ronan while Ronan was refusing to pay attention to him, which might make this Ronan's fault, except fuck that, everything is Cheng's fault. "Perhaps you just need to know the trick," and then he takes the sphere out of Ronan's hand and throws it hard at the bare cement floor.

"Fuck -- "

Ronan dives for it; he falls half on his face and half on his funny bone, with his legs still caught over the arm of the dumpster dive La-Z-Boy. The glass ball hits the ground an inch from his fingers.

Light bursts out in all directions.

Ronan blinks and swears and pushes up off his elbow onto his hand, and when he's finally able to look up, the ceiling is already gone, hidden from view by the night sky.

It's impressive. But he's seen it before, and he never worries about whether these things will work _right_ , only whether they'll work at all.

"What did you do that for?" he barks at Cheng, who is still craning his neck upwards like he's impressed.

"Dream things all have a certain kind of logic to them," he says. "You just have to figure out what it is."

Ronan glares, even though he thinks the soft beautiful illumination of the stars and the moon and the northern lights are not really the right lighting for a death glare.

"You don't know my shit better than me."

"I would not ever attempt to imagine the insides of your mind," Cheng says. "But it takes no great feat of insight to guess that your subconscious likes to destroy things."

Ronan looks down, hoping to find some broken glass so he can berate Cheng for making a mess in Monmouth. It'll be fun to keep a straight face through the irony of that statement.

There's no broken glass. Instead of shattering, the sphere flattened out to a perfect disk. He lifts his support hand off the ground, awkwardly holding his torso up in midair long enough to pick up the disk.

Once it's back in his hand it curls in on itself until it's a sphere again, round and seamless and perfect. The sky disappears. They are once more in a shitty warehouse.

Ronan tosses the globe up and catches it. Toss, catch. Toss, catch.

"Huh." He's interested enough that he's not annoyed anymore. Is this that 'intellectual curiosity' thing that professors were always bitching at him about not having?

He tosses it up one more time, higher than before, and watches it arc up, up, and hang in the air for a split second before falling to the ground and breaking open again.

The sky is back. It makes the warehouse feel infinite, and small, and anything but empty.

"Aurora borealis," Cheng comments absently. He sounds like he's got some of that intellectual curiosity, too. It's fucking contagious. People ought to be ashamed of infecting children with it.

Ronan has a crick in his neck and his core is tired of holding up the rest of him. He slides head first off the armchair and onto the ground, since there's no broken glass after all, and lays out flat looking up.

"I do believe," Cheng says, abruptly, or maybe it's only that any words feel abrupt in the surrounding calm, "that is not the real sky."

"How high are you that you thought I stole the real sky and was carrying it around in my pocket?"

"Sadly, not that high." Cheng sits down on the ground, not close enough that Ronan can shove him away. "It is not trying even to _look_ like the real sky, is the thing that interests me."

"What, you want more pollution and satellites and shit?"

"I am not criticizing. I am observing, only."

"Well, stop it."

"I don't think I shall." Cheng casts a look over at him. Maybe it's supposed to be pointed; the stupid mood lighting is making both of their moods go sideways. "You know, the fact that someone else experiences the same thing that you do does not take it away from you."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. It's only an observation." Cheng stretches out flat on the ground and stops _looking_ at Ronan, which, if he has to be fucking indoor stargazing with Cheng, at least he has that silver lining to cling to. "It is rather nice to see the northern lights this far south."

Ronan says "meh" like he isn't proud of how they'd turned out, like it hadn't taken several attempt to get his stupid dreams to figure out exactly what he wanted.

"I don't believe any of these constellations are familiar."

"Sure they are." It's true; but as soon as the words are out he realizes that he doesn't know what any of them are. Wherever he's seen them, it isn't in that shitty real sky that Cheng is so hung up on.

"Uh-huh." Cheng points, unconvinced. "So what is that one?"

The stars he's picked out don't look like much of anything to Ronan. Stars never do. How the hell are you supposed to find the one exact right set of lines in a whole sea of possible combinations, like a road trip everyone else got a directions for while you're still trying to find the highway.

But if it's all just made up connections and phony meanings, it's not like he can be wrong. Who knows? He might even trip over something real.

"That's the Fugly Duckling," he tells Cheng, confident to the point of condescension.

"Right. And I suppose the ancient Greeks used to guide their ships at night by the light of _the Fugly Duckling_."

"Of course not. It was the Etruscans."

"Oh, of _course_."

-

When Gansey gets home, it's to the sight of Ronan and Henry lying on the ground, just in arm's reach, pointing up at an impossible swirl of dark and light that has somehow replaced the ceiling with all those spots that he's vaguely anxious might be black mold.

"What is this?"

Cheng props himself up just high enough to spot him in the doorway. "Gansey boy! Perfect, you are just in time to settle a tie. One of us thinks this constellation should be called Cupid's Arrow, and one of us wants to name it the Crooked Wang."

That was not an explanation. He looks upwards again and blinks; the sky doesn't explain itself, either.

"If you want me to judge this contest blind, I can already tell whose name is whose." He can't pick out the constellation in question, and he immediately tires of looking for it. Maybe he became desensitized to magic at some point after his second resurrection, maybe the night sky inside his own home ought to move him more than it does, but the truly incredible sight is on the ground, where two people he can barely get to ride in the same vehicle are having a conversation of their own volition.

Granted, the conversation consists of _if we only had a laser pointer -- don't bring your garbage machines into my sky shit,_ but the sniping is less like a guard dog's growl and more like the last halfhearted bark before a puppy decides that all it really wants is to lick your hand.

There's enough space between Ronan and Henry to fit one person. Gansey drops down exactly in the middle of them.

"All right," he says, "we all agree that _that_ looks like a duck, correct?"

Ronan gloats. Henry complains bitterly and theatrically about betrayal. Gansey just enjoys the fact that neither of them are looking at him, that if either of them were they would see that he is smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/180361602385/for-the-prompt-thing-94-ronan-to-henry-cheng).


End file.
